Aggresive Whipping Tips

[ABigCivFan]

Whipping is big part of the decision making in Civ4, especially in the early era. I have a few whipping tips hoping they can aid newer players developing their early game.

General whipping rules:

1. Do not whip away pops working Food, Commerce(gold/Gem), and hammer (copper/iron) tiles.

2. Whip the following buildings as soon as they can be whipped (whip away as many pops as you need as not to violate rule #1):

Monument
Granary
Forge
Courthouse
Library
Universities (meet Oxford requirement)
Lighthouse (improve seafood yield)
Market (if you have market luxoury resources)


3. You do not need to wait until the "cruelty period" is over before the next whip, especially if you are running HR, you can always fight with more cheap units. The many turns of maint savings (from whipped courthouse) can be quite significant.

4. Don't be afraid to whip your cottage cities, early on cottages grow very slowly, and when you need the liberary/market in that city, whip them.

5. When you spot a good Globe Theater city with good food, whip it like no tommorrow, infras, units, missionaries, whatever you like, at the end, build some work shops and get the GT built in this city, your +60 turns of "Cruelty Period" is all wiped out!

1 pop = 30 hammers being the best conversion in game from food->hammer. A food resource can grow your cities fast, so use it.

Feel free to add other tips.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Food, glorious food.

And as I just argued in another thread, "people grow back -- trees don't!"

 

[UncleJJ]

1 pop = 30 hammers being the best conversion in game from food->hammer. A food resource can grow your cities fast, so use it.

Feel free to add other tips.

In the late game be sure to get the Kremlin for a +50% boost to Slavery

1 pop = 45 hammers being the best conversion in game from food->hammer in general using whipping

Actually Drafting a rifleman is a much better food to hammer conversion rate (you get 110 hammers for 1 pop) but there is more unhappiness and less exp for the unit, and you can only draft units whereas whipping can build anything.

 

[DaveMcW]

4. Growing cottages is more important than building gold and science improvements.

 

[CreeDakota]

I dont agree with your list of buildings to whip. Way too many and ignores specilization. The only one on the list should be granary. All the rest are situational/city specific.

 

[Stewie0416]

In the late game be sure to get the Kremlin for a +50% boost to Slavery

1 pop = 45 hammers being the best conversion in game from food->hammer in general using whipping

How does the Kremlin help Slavery?

 

[ABigCivFan]

4. Growing cottages is more important than building gold and science improvements.

If my cottage city is working 6 villages and 2 new cottages, I would easily whip away the 2 pops working the new cottages for a market to immediately improve the gold output of this city. Especially when these 2 pops can grow back quickly with food resources.

I dont agree with your list of buildings to whip. Way too many and ignores specilization. The only one on the list should be granary. All the rest are situational/city specific.

This is just a general list of important buildings in early game, only whip the ones you need in specialized cities.

Granary and lighthouse are good whips since they directly improve the whipping engine (i.e. Food).

Forge improves whipping efficiency by 25%. Organized Religion also increase whipping efficiency.

Of course every building can be a good situiational whip.

 

[Nials]

How does the Kremlin help Slavery?

It helps by reducing the population needed to finish a build.

Normally you get 30 per pop on normal speed, but since the Kremlin reduces this cost by 1/3, only 2/3 pop is required to gain 30 , which means you now get 30*3/2 = 45 per population point.

 

[Stewie0416]

It helps by reducing the population needed to finish a build.

Normally you get 30 per pop on normal speed, but since the Kremlin reduces this cost by 1/3, only 2/3 pop is required to gain 30 , which means you now get 30*3/2 = 45 per population point.

Wait i thought the kremlin reduced cost when you rush buy Whoops

 

[absimiliard]

Tip #XX:
If you're chopping and whipping in the early game don't stack too much overflow into anything, sometimes you lose hammers if your production isn't high enough.

-abs is in the lame-tips business today, this one's free

 

[Nials]

Wait i thought the kremlin reduced cost when you rush buy Whoops

It does too. It affects both rush buying under Universal Suffrage and rushing by using population under Slavery.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm pretty torn reading this. ABCF is a top notch player who wins consistently on deity...but DaveMCW is also a top notch player, and they disagree on whipping away pop on cottages.

I've tried immortal games based on Dave's guide, and unless I do something stupid or can't get enough cities I'll win (although sometimes I don't prioritize a GPP city enough and fall further behind in tech than I should or don't bulb lib as fast as possible). Generally speaking though growing cities ASAP and working cottages in a decent # of cities has served me quite well.

By the way, we have to compare whipping to working hill mines (or even a plains forest/caste workshop). I will ignore the kremlin here since it changes the equation substantially and most players struggle with whipping decisions well before it's available. It's mighty hard to out-do a mined grass hill via whipping (like, impossible?). Once you get up in pop more and more hammer-inefficient tiles start to look better than a whip. At some point yes, EVEN the plains forests start looking better...though I don't recall that cutoff it's probably somewhat large. However, after learning from oyzar (another strong player) to grow my cities ASAP once I hit HR, it's more and more frequent that I have a number of cities with double digit pop working cottages, mines, or farms by the early ADs...several of these cities will get there before I even have some of the techs that allow buildings in this set of tips.

Once I'm up there I'll consider whipping away anger (or soon to be anger) and overflowing into a cheap unit if I'm in HR (very easy with warriors), since that yields both multipliers AND a higher cap once the whip anger wears off (especially if my hammer cities can't keep up which happens on occasion). However, I have a tough sell on whips beyond a border pop/granary...and of course meeting the req's for oxford.

I also find slavery interfering with caste and GP farming, further blurring when to use slavery. Very large cities under caste may be better served working workshops than whipping, especially if the opportunity cost of slavery is GPP speed.

I'm still trying to sort this out...it seems to be a pretty big grey area.

 

[ABigCivFan]

@TMIT

I am not advocating to whip every city for every thing, these are just some very basic and general tips aimed for Early Era when we do not have the techs/civics avaiable to boost hammers.

There are many situiations that i would not recommand whip:

1. Beureacracy capital with multiple cottages
2. Hammer rich cities producing +13 hammers/turn, if you can build an archer every 2 turns, there is no need to whip. Only whip buildings when you run out of hills to work
3. Commerce cities should only whip buildings needed for its purpose. I often whip science multipliers in commerce cities ASAP, and later when i have those super workshops, i would hammer build the gold multipliers if needed.

On higher levels, I can rarely settler more than 2 good commerce cities (including capital) and 1 GP city. Since most other cities are used to "Meet National wonder requirements" early, they should not be liabilities. So I recommand build farms and whip these "secondary" cities aggressively early such as granary, library, courthouse, forge, barracks. When Democracy/Guild/chemistry hit, mass build cottages/workshops and switch to caste and later Emancipation at periods to improve econ.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Hmm, that makes sense. Getting past 6 cities peacefully (or hell, at all early on) on deity is completely different from other difficulties. I could see this skewing one's choices in favor of whipping, to gain the powerful national wonders of choice ASAP. IIRC you in particular prioritize a bureaucracy capitol. If you have 6 cities (often all you can get on deity I'd imagine, though in most immortal games I get more), it makes sense to whip more to power up 50-75% of your research through a huge amount of % multipliers.

 

[Dirk1302]

@TMIT but also some others he's referring to in his post:

First of all when you get to immortal/deity level hard rules don't have that much relevance anymore. Having said that i'm a bit amazed that Dave says he won't whip a cottage city for science. Now i know Dave won't cottage everything slow growing a city, he'll farm some tiles so as to get +5 food surplus. Now if you have this surplus, surely you'll whip for a university if it takes 25 turns to build otherwise. Science buildings should be build asap, almost always including academy in capital for instance. Gold buildings is another matter completely , a good player on immortal + will be at 70%+ science rate, often 100% for a long time. So gold buildings definitely take a backseat.

But unless you play for a quick medieval/early renaissance rush, building 6 unis/oxford is absolutely crucial often doubling research. Everything else usually has to give way to this purpose unless you plan for a quick war.

I also think Oyzar is a good player but he's someone who likes multiplayer against other humans more than playing against ais. In multiplayer early defence and quick production in other words vertical growth (few cities, well developed) is far more important than in single ai play when imo quick expansion at the cost of economy is more important. I'd love to see Oyzar finish a game on immortal/deity with a few vertical grown cities

You recover soon enough from this expansion in sp but playing against other humans you just get trampled. Never forget that other humans are 100% more aggressive/opportunistic than even Monty will ever be.

Basically i agree with ABC, if you think you whip enough, always think if you can whip one more. I also have a suggestion of my own, pertaining particularly to the early game:Calculate your first 40 moves, if you start doing this you'll be amazed at the outcomes.I think i'm the only one who begins with worker-second worker on many starts, i would never have found out that this is a good idea if i wouldn't have compared several approaches comparing output for all these approaches. It's anti intuitive but often winning just the same. Same approach can be applied to whipping science buildings midgame btw , there's nothing mysterious about it, just compare output until both approaches come together (ie the science building is made in both approaches) and you'll know.

 

[ppciv4]

FOOD is power. the most important one.

 

[ppciv4]

and whipping makes Exp more valuable.

 

[vicawoo]

Not whipping most science buildings is usually mathematically superior.

Consider markets cost 5 pop to whip, universities 6+. You can reduce it with organized religion.

Let's say you're size 10, have 1 food resource and have 7 riverside villages, 2 cottages. Let's say you have OR so 4 pop will give you 5 pop worth of whipping. In the short run, losing the 2 cottages and 2 riverside villages is 10 commerce, your previous commerce was 30. You're losing 1/3 of your commerce (not including trade routes, etc) for a 25% increase. But it's not a 25% commerce increase, it's a 25% gold increase, which at 50% slider is more like a 12.5% increase. (a more accurate argument is in the time it takes to grow back, how many more cottages will you be working and how much more developed will the whipped ones be?)

You'll grow them back, but in that time the commerce city could have grown larger, so it's not almost free or as instant as people assume. The more I play, the more I realize how much slower 10 turns can be.

Another question is whether it's better to run a plains/hill or grassland/hill after your grassland tiles are done to slowly make your market or to run specialists.

 

[Dirk1302]

Besides OR there are forges as a general rule build (whip) these first.
There's Oxford to build
It depends on happy/health cap
It depends on slider, 50% is very low in the university age

It depends on how many hills there are and how much food+ you have, If it takes 100 turns to make the university you don't have that much choice, if it's 10 then hammering might be better, oth you can probably keep working most of the cottages in this case, you lose the mine tiles for some time.

It probably depends on other things that i don't think of now as well.

Impossible to give hard rules for this imo.

 

[Iranon]

Just another small point: Filler cities can make the whip more efficient. You can use all that wonderful land without bending over backwards to avoid growth past any caps, and whipping is more efficient in smaller cities anyway.

In the early game, a city just working grassland pigs beyond the home tile can grow up to 3 specialists and whip 2 of them away every 10 turns. This is a very respectable mixed output for the small footprint, especially if you hardly know what else to do with the pig (surrounding cities operating at their caps working good land).
Later in the game, corporation food turned into Kremlin-assisted whips can make cities with a footprint of 1 tile very efficient, location be damned.

Even if your overwhelming priority is to tweak the heck out of your existing cities you might still consider this if you can found such a filler city on a junk tile.

***

Considering whether a whip is worth it: usually, we whip away citizens that operate at a food deficit. A Representation-boosted scientist turns food into science at the rate of 1:3, a plains mine converts food to hammers at a rate of 1:2 and so on, both taking up a population point.
The whip turns food into production at a rate of (average city size during regrowth+10):30 on normal speed. Other factors might influence the decision whether to whip or not (front-loading production, smaller average city size which affects upkeep and trade, cap limitations).

While working tiles can usually more than match whipping for a food-to-hammers conversion, we also need to consider population efficiency. Otherwise, we wouldn't whip where we could work grassland forests (free production) and plains forests would be as useful as mined plains hills (both converting food:hammers at a ratio of 1:2, but the former taking up twice as much population).
One myth that crops up very often: that one should never whip away citizens working grassland hills since a conversion of 1 food to 3 hammers is unattainable by whipping before the Kremlin. This ignores that the privilege of converting 1 food into 3 hammers also costs us 1 citizen who could do something else instead - like growing more food. This is akin to ignoring the happiness limitations of whipping.

At a happy cap of 6 with plenty of grassland farms/mines available, a 6-to-3 or 6-to-4 whip and regrowing with up to 4 farms, then switching to mines to avoid unhappiness will result in a higher hammer output than working the stable 2 farms, 4 mines. The gains are small for the micromanagement involved, but they outline that whipping can be useful even when there are decent production tiles available.

This is also relevant in the choice between wipping supported by additional farms or relying on Caste System workshops. Since we're giving up 2 food for 3 hammers, we're looking at a break-even-point at size 10. Since that's the average size during regrowth, whipping specialists with an all-farm setup gives a mix of hammers and specialist output that's not achievable by a stable setup of farms and workshops until size 12.
As always, there are many other factors - this is just looking at raw hammer efficiency in a given context. Even then it should be noted that Slavery favours a hybrid approach (limited by specialists slots on one side and how many populations points we can whip away in one go on the other) while Caste System allows extremes of all-production or all-specialists, at any size and independent of infrastructure.